Excel won't recognize a formula

One of my co-workers accidentally deleted some of the formulas from a file I had created for him, and so I restored the page he had changed from the backup I had made. I noticed today that all of the functions on the page that are supposed to reference other sheets in the same file were referencing those sheets in the backup file. However, whenever I change them, Excel will no longer give me a value, and just shows the formula.

For instance:

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which I change to:

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But when I hit enter, Excel displays =IF(ISBLANK(List!A13)," ",List!A13) instead of what it should display.


Also, is there a way to protect a portion of a sheet? I want to prevent anyone who uses the file from deleting/changing formulas without realizing it, while still allowing the other parts of the sheet to be worked with.

Try going to Edit|Replace and replace = with = (equal signs)

For the protection.. select the cells you want users to have use of and then go to Format|Cells and Protection tab... Uncheck Locked.

Click Ok.

Go to Tools|Protection|Protect Sheet and complete the popup form.